Why is there a leap day

You hear about a leap day all the time but you don't know what it's all about? This article is for you!

Ask Naij

2016 is a leap year, which usually scares the superstitious people. Why is there a leap day in February and why are people so freaked out? They are afraid of misfortunes, disasters and failures. However, the statistics shows the opposite. There’s the same frequency of bad events as any other year. It's just one extra day in the calendar and the rest is some personal beliefs of different people.

The 29th of February is the 60th day of a leap year in the Gregorian calendar. It is the only day that does not exist in a non-leap year but it mainly takes place once in four years.

Back in 46 BC Gaius Julius Caesar established the amount of days in one year and made a calendar according to the advices of his astronomers.

We have an additional day and the leap year itself because of our planet Earth. Its journey around the Sun doesn’t last exactly 365 days. It goes on for 365 days and about 6 hours more. So every year lasts a little bit more than 365 days but we usually ignore the rest couple hours. Therefore, to keep things balanced astronomers decided to add a leap day every four years. It helped us to keep up with the moving of our planet.

The chance to be born this exclusive day is 1 to 1461. However, the doctors report that some mothers change the date of birth of their child so that they can have an actual birthday every year.

A lot of famous people were born in leap year.

The statistics of tragedies and catastrophes shows that the amount of bad events doesn’t increase during the leap year. The First and the Second World Wars started in a normal year. The massive flooding in the history of mankind also took place also in 1887, which was a normal year. The biggest and most well-known tragedy that happened in a leap year happened more than a century ago. It was the crash of "Titanic” which took the lives of almost one and a half thousand people.

There are about four million people living in the world today, whose date of birth was officially registered on the 29th of February. It is only 0.069% of the Earth population.

You already know why it is a leap year in 2016. So don’t believe in what some people say. Any year can be both bad and good for you but it depends only on your attitude.

Here are some funny leap day quotes.

1. "It's Leap Day. Real life is for March." — 30 Rock

2. "According to 30 Rock, which is an authority on these matters: anything that happens today, didn't." — Anonymous

3. "It's Leap Day, not sleep day!" — Modern Family

4. "Happy Leap Day! Enjoy it while it's here...because like a Kobe Bryant pass, it only occurs once every four years." — Anonymous

5. "Like leap-year day — nothing in itself, but a nudge jostling every other day." — Michael Cisco

6. "Happy Leap Day. A day where 'this time last year' and 'this time next year' does not apply." — Anonymous

5. "Like leap-year day — nothing in itself, but a nudge jostling every other day." — Michael Cisco

6. "Happy Leap Day. A day where 'this time last year' and 'this time next year' does not apply." — Anonymous

7. "Every leap year I like to jump. It’s a good way to get my daily exercise in every four years." — Jarod Kintz

8. "Today is an ephemeral ghost...A strange amazing day that comes only once every four years. For the rest of the time it does not 'exist.' In mundane terms, it marks a 'leap' in time, when the calendar is adjusted to make up for extra seconds accumulated over the preceding three years due to the rotation of the earth. A day of temporal tune up! But this day holds another secret — it contains one of those truly rare moments of delightful transience and light uncertainty that only exist on the razor edge of things, along a buzzing plane of quantum probability...A day of unlocked potential. Will you or won't you? Should you or shouldn't you? Use this day to do something daring, extraordinary and unlike yourself. Take a chance and shape a different pattern in your personal cloud of probability!" — Vera Nazarian

29 February and day 366 in a leap year, due to the fact that the Earth is its revolution around the Sun is completed in 365 days 5 hours 48 minutes and 46 seconds. In order to compensate for and to prevent displacement of the actual seasons of the year on the calendar, we add every fourth year one day in February.

To leap year everyone is different - someone considers this period the most common year, which does not carry any danger, someone is afraid of it, and associates with this period lot of prejudice. In a Leap year it is impossible to start anything serious - the building houses a large contract or agreement, purchases, weddings and more. All this was banned. Because nothing good comes out of such undertakings will not work - everything will fall apart soon and will bring with it many challenges.